[erlang-questions] atom table limit & erlang shell

[Thomas Lindgren]

--- Howard Yeh <hayeah@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> What happens if I exceed the atom table limit, and
> how would I know?

Why not try it? For example,

atom_killer() -> atom_killer(0).

atom_killer(N) ->
   list_to_atom(integer_to_list(N)),
   atom_killer(N+1).

(Running that on my mac gave a bus error and a crash
dump.)

> i am doing some code generation, which dynamically
> create maybe
> 2000~3000 new atoms (which are reused for later).
> Would that go over
> the limit?

No, the max number is 1048576.

http://www.erlang.org/doc/efficiency_guide/advanced.html

You can also see the amount of memory used for
different purposes with erlang:memory/1, for instance
erlang:memory(atom_used).

Best,
Thomas